


Takes Getting Used To

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: Whole New Vision [13]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-16
Updated: 2009-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:56:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Juliet loves the Liz she has right now. That doesn’t stop her looking for scraps of the old Liz.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Takes Getting Used To

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the beta, Luka. :)
> 
> The quote is Romeo and Juliet - part of Romeo's paean to Juliet.

            They are older and wiser and everything has changed. It takes getting used to, after the first startled collision of lives; it takes a bit of time and a bit of space to understand that they can’t just go back to what they had. Still, among the certainties that remain – because changed though they are, there are some things that go down to the bone for both of them – is this: Juliet can rely on Liz, and Liz can rely on Juliet. It’s what Liz whispers into her ear at the end of their first date (if it’s really their first date, and not just picking up where they should never have left off) when Juliet panics that this is it and clings to her. _It’s okay, Ju. I’m not going anywhere_.

 

            Except of course she is, and that takes getting used to, the sudden absences, the fear Liz leaves behind and the nightmares she brings home, to Juliet’s beautiful, tasteful flat that looks pale and frivolous beside Liz’s gut-wrenching reality, or worse to Liz’s cardboard-walled government-issue house, which is empty and strange because Liz is unexpectedly lousy at making a home. She can make a home live, yes; but she can’t make the home itself, she needs Juliet or Jamie or her father and step-dad for that. She needs people.

 

            Walking around Liz’s house Juliet realises that Liz needed her and she wasn’t there, and that aches her heart. That, like the going away, is new. That takes some getting used to.

 

            Some new things are good. The way Liz looks in a dress uniform, for instance, or the owl tattoo just below the nub of bone at the nape of her neck which is so surprisingly sensitive, and then, speaking of tattoos, the quote in a perfect facsimile of Liz’s scrawled handwriting laid over her spine:  _o she doth teach the torches to burn bright_ , it says, and Juliet’s eyes go round.

 

            “Too soon?” she says, frightened and questioning.

 

            Liz gives her a new, unfamiliar look, and this one Juliet likes: steady and warm and sure in its knowledge. “It was always you,” she says, “whatever happens, it will always be you,” and goes back to letting Juliet show off a few new things of her own.

 

            New things take getting used to, and Juliet likes them, but she looks for the scraps of the old anyway, looks for the little signs that tell her she didn’t abandon her old girlfriend to the vicissitudes of change without leaving her some protection. Even though they were falling apart under the weight of lies Liz refused to tell and secrets Juliet wasn’t allowed to hear, even though she had no choice, Juliet feels guilty. She remembers the hell Liz went through as a teenager and almost wishes she had stayed to see her safely out of it.

 

            “Bollocks,” Liz growls over the breakfast table, reaches behind her, and fishes in a drawer for heaven knows what. She knows where all her possessions are in this house, which is perhaps why there are so few, because Liz was never a fan of the extraneous or unnecessary and things like that only make it into her life when she’s forgotten about them.

 

            Juliet blinks at her. “Huh?”

 

            “I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Liz says precisely, laying down a perfect stripe of shimmering nail-varnish so red it’s almost black on her thumb-nail,  “but whatever it is, it’s upsetting you. Therefore it’s bollocks. Q.E.D.”

 

            Juliet fixates on the nail-varnish, and a stupid smile makes its way onto her face.

 

            “Plus,” Liz adds, pausing in her endeavours, “you have rehearsals in half an hour.”

 

            Juliet should be yelping and jumping up and running for the bus. She can’t. She can’t stop smiling, because this is a _gift_ , two scraps in one day. Liz has memorised her schedule the way she did before and Liz still paints her nails the way Juliet taught her. And Liz is not the girl she was, but the woman she is hasn’t forgotten that girl.

 

            “Hmm?” Liz is looking at her now, the nail-varnish cap with its attached brush hanging in mid-air.

 

            “Still?” Juliet asks, and knows that Liz knows she’s talking about the nail-varnish.

 

            “Always,” Liz says, and drops her eyes. She sniffs, and squares her shoulders, denying herself the right to sentimental feelings (a new thing, not one Juliet likes). “Bad habits are hard to break.”

 

            Juliet only grins harder. She could get used to this.

 


End file.
